Pakistan 1951-2001: The Forgotten Asian Economic Success

Lahore School of Economics Center for Research in Economics and Business (CREB) is organizing a seminar by Dr. Mathew McCartney on Monday April 5, 2010 at Mahmood Chaudhry Library, Lahore.

The topic of the seminar is: Pakistan 1951-2001: The Forgotten Asian Economic Success. There is an almost uniformly negative perception of Pakistan’s economy in current media and academia, this view is sharpened by the very positive reporting of India – the new Asian Giant/ Miracle. It is firstly interesting to remember how such images have changed dramatically over time. In the 1960s for example Pakistan was widely seen as a ‘miracle’ economy with a modernizing and pro-western leader and India as a country becoming increasingly impossible to govern and facing a future of likely mass famine.

Making a judgment about whether a country/ economy has been a ‘success’ or ‘failure’ is too often based on media perception and heavily weighed by recent economic events. There are more rigorous means of making such a judgment about Pakistan since 1947. Those included in this seminar are a comparison with Pakistan’s own history before 1947, a comparison with similar developing countries after 1947 and a comparison of Pakistan’s development after 1947 with the initial conditions and constraints prevailing at independence. Using these more substantial and rigorous measures it can be possible under certain circumstances to say that Pakistan is indeed ‘the forgotten economic success of Asia’ of the last sixty years.

Dr Mathew McCartney is visiting CREB for two weeks. He is currently a lecturer in Economics and admissions tutor in the department of Economics, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London). He has an MPhil from Oxford and a PhD from SOAS. He has also taught at Korea University in Seoul and JNU, New Delhi. His recent publications include ‘India-The Political Economy of Growth Stagnation and the State, 1951-2007’, London, Routledge (2009), ‘Political Economy, Growth and Liberalization, in India 1991-2008’, London, Routledge (2009). His research interests are “role of the state in late development, industry and industrialization, economic growth, comparative political economy of South Asia, India and Pakistan since independence.” {Via Logic is Variable}